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Monday, August 10, 2015

Daily 2 Cents: Events Throughout My Life -- 5 Women Accused of Being Witches Beaten To Death -- The Art of Manifestation

Events Throughout My Life

I’m writing this mostly to get it off my chest. It’s been on my mind for – well, most of my life, I suppose. I don’t know if submitting this report will help me get any answers. I don’t even know if this is the kind of report you guys usually deal with, or, if it is, if anyone will get around to reading it. Doesn’t matter, I guess. At the very least this will be therapeutic.

It’s a long story. I’ll begin at the beginning, because context is needed. As a child I was always very interested in UFOs and aliens. Not unusual; what little boy wasn’t fascinated by them? But – and I don’t know if this was concurrent with my fascination or if there was some abrupt change – I was also terrified by them. I had recurring nightmares about seeing UFOs or begin taken by alien beings. They are among my earliest memories, these dreams, and they so affected me that I began to dread the night. I didn’t want to go to sleep, because I knew that I would have one of these dreams and/or I would wake up in the middle of the night, frightened and feeling terribly alone.

I grew up in a big old house in Milwaukee, WI, near Lake Michigan. It creaked and groaned and did all the things old houses do that frighten children. Eventually we moved, around my teens. I have lots of good memories from that first house, but every time I think of it I feel a reactionary sort of unease or creeping dread. I hated being alone; even if there was someone in the next room or on the floor above me, being alone made me feel uneasy, jumpy, like I was being watched. Things only grew worse when I eventually got my own bedroom on the second floor. Everyone else slept downstairs, so when I went to bed I would be truly alone in the dark.

Throughout this time, I can always remember my dread and unease focusing on aliens. Yes, occasionally a ghost movie or something would frighten me, but never as badly or as regularly as the UFO/alien phenomenon. It got to the point where just seeing an image of a UFO or a depiction of an alien made me uncomfortable for the rest of the day, and I knew it would be a rough night. But at the same time, I was still fascinated. I wanted to research everything I could about them, about UFOs, and about the encounters people had. It was a paradoxical relationship – I was, ultimately, the author of my own discomfort.

When we moved to a new, smaller house, some of that unease went away. All the bedrooms were on the same floor in the same hallway, so I didn’t feel quite as alone when night came. Aliens and UFOs still fascinated and terrified me, but the dreams stopped, or at least came far less frequently and were much less intense.

Then, just before starting high school, I was in a Barnes & Noble when I came across Whitley Strieber’s Communion. I wasn’t looking for it, didn’t even know it existed, but that famous cover image literally stopped me in my tracks. It was somehow different from all the other depictions I had seen, despite bearing all the classic hallmarks: large head, dark almond-shaped eyes, minimal features. It still has an effect on me, even though I can’t place my finger on what exactly makes it unique. I had to pick up the book, and I knew that I had to read it. I did, that very night, all in one sitting. I finished early in the morning. It scared the hell out of me, but it also felt right, somehow. Maybe that’s why it was so frightening – because it felt like Strieber was describing something I already knew so much about, more so than any other encounter I had read about. I don’t know if there was an ounce of fact in that book, but I was and still am struck with the feeling that he got it right.

Again, despite being terrified, I was also fascinated by Communion. I read it twice and was left feeling like I needed more. I was searching for answers, but I didn’t really know how to ask the right questions. It became a sort of obsession throughout high school.
I began to look back on my life (short as it was), at things that had always struck me as odd, standing out in my memory, but which I had managed to ignore. I began to, I guess, notice them more. I was familiar with the common hallmarks of supposed alien encounters, but it wasn’t until reading Communion that I began to notice how many of those could be found in my own life. I realized that, in one form or another, the alien/UFO phenomenon had been a running theme throughout my entire life, just beneath the surface. For the first time I actually began to consider the possibility that I had had at least one encounter.

What follows is a list of the events that have always stood out to me. It’s in as close to a chronological order as I can manage. Years and age-ranges aren’t specific, and probably aren’t that accurate; my memory isn’t great when it comes to time.

*** There are the dreams I previously mentioned. These are among my earliest memories and my earliest remembered dreams, occurring maybe until I was in middle school. They stand out for being so vivid, so recurrent, and so terrifying unlike any of my other nightmares. There are three that I remember specifically:
- Being with my father in his truck driving at night and getting picked up by a UFO, the classic saucer-shape.

- Standing outside my old house at night, before a large bush that grew near the driveway, and talking to or hearing something in the bushes speaking – something I somehow knew was not human.

- Being in a large white room with other children and alien beings who were sort of like caretakers. I remember being very frightened of them, though the other kids seemed fine, and of trying to run away by climbing a kind of ropey structure, like you would find on a playground. One of the beings was following me, trying to calm me down, I think.

These dreams have always seemed to me to be dreams, yet they’re more vivid than most memories I have from the same age.

*** Another one of my earliest memories is of someone climbing into the bedroom I shared with my sister through the window closest to my bed. This is odd, since our bedroom was two stories off the ground (the old house was a duplex). I can’t remember what the person looked like, or anything that happened before or after; I only remember lying in bed, looking past my feet towards the window, and seeing someone coming through it. I have asked my sister if she ever remembers me telling her about this, and she confirmed that I once said someone had come into our bedroom at night.

*** Yet another early memory, in the same bedroom. I’m lying in bed when bright light comes through the windows, a sort of “sunset” light, if that makes sense. Something floats into the bedroom, near the ceiling; something I can’t describe. The best image I have of it is sort of pancake-shaped, maybe the size of those flying disc sleds; I also have the impression of it being somehow organic. I don’t know if this was a dream or something I saw on television and confused for an actual memory. Regardless, it had a strong enough effect on me that, what I think must have been several years later, while visiting my grandparents, I felt uneasy while standing in the bedroom at their house and seeing the same sort of “sunset” light (from, I’m assuming, the actual sun) shining through the windows.

*** I have, at least once, fallen asleep and woken up in two different places. In my old house, after moving to my bedroom upstairs, I once spent the night in a bed downstairs because of how uncomfortable I was upstairs. I woke up in my own bedroom. It is entirely possible my dad moved me in the night, or that I even sleepwalked.

*** My family has a cabin in the northern part of Wisconsin, near a small town. It’s fairly isolated; there are neighbors, but a bit of forest between each cabin. Initially I loved going up there, and still do enjoy it; but gradually I began to feel the same sense of unease that I experienced in my own house, specifically at night or when alone. Perhaps this has to do with me being a city boy and going out into the country. I don’t know, but several things have happened at that cabin.

*** One winter, at the cabin, I was walking at night with my dad. The cabin is on a block about two miles around. While walking we saw a bright orange light or sphere moving swiftly and silently across the sky. Eventually we lost track of it – I don’t remember exactly how. Probably it passed behind the trees or over the horizon. Either way, not long after it disappeared we saw what looked like your typical satellites, a lot of them, converging from multiple directions on where the bright sphere had been.

*** After moving to the new house, not long after reading Communion, I was reading in bed at night (the book was Jurassic Park if that matters). I distinctly remember lying on my back and glancing at the clock sitting on the desk at the foot of my bed and seeing that it was eleven, and also seeing that the hall light was on (I slept, and still do sleep, with the bedroom door open; having it closed makes me uncomfortable). The very next thing I remember is finding myself in bed, on my side or stomach, book on the floor, feeling not the least bit tired or like I had just woken up. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was now three in the morning, and the hall light was off. It is possible I merely fell asleep while reading – but if so, then it was an instant and very deep sleep, unlike any other time I have fallen asleep while reading. I wasn’t tired while reading, and it has always taken me a long time to get to sleep – it almost never happens before midnight, even if I go to bed early. Regardless, the event struck me as strange.

*** During the summer, one year after I first read Communion, my dad, sister, and I went up to our cabin. I went up there with a secret plan: I would go out at night and…see what would happen, I guess. I had read about people who could supposedly make contact through meditation and mental will. It seemed worth a shot. I wanted answers and was willing to try. Each night during that trip I tried to go outside by myself late at night and walk up the road to a clearing where I had a good view of the sky. It was almost impossible for me to do – I was terrified and never made it beyond the driveway, until the final night we were there. I took a flashlight, told my dad and sister I was going to go look at the stars, and actually managed to reach the clearing. I spent maybe a half-hour or forty-five minutes, focusing very hard on wanting to make contact, or to see something, anything that would give me answers. Nothing happened, and I hurried home. My dad and sister were still up, but I decided I was going to go to bed. I felt fine, very calm, which was a bit unusual, considering how nerve-wracking the experience had been, and how long it had taken me to work up the courage. I fell asleep almost immediately, which, as I mentioned above, is also unusual. I remember having a brief dream, in which I woke up the next morning and went to the mirror to see symbols etched into my skin. They were not there when I woke up, obviously. It was Sunday and we were going to church. While waiting for my sister to finish in the bathroom so I could use it, I suddenly got a strong nosebleed. There was nothing I can think of that would have caused it; it was summer, and right near the lake, so not very dry. I think, but I’m not positive, that it was preceded by a sharp pain in my sinus. Either way, I was understandably unnerved. Eventually the blood stopped and we went to church. On the way home my dad asked, what I believe to be out of the blue, if I had gone outside last night to look for UFOs. I said yes, and asked why? He told me that late last night he had been aware of a “presence” in his bedroom, but saw nothing. My sister then told us about a dream she had had that same night: she was in a sort of hospital room with lots of beds, occupied by girls her age, some of whom she said she recognized from school. There were doctors there placing a box-like device over their stomach area to see if they were capable of becoming pregnant. It’s possible they both knew I had gone to look for UFOs the previous night and had conspired to mess with me the next morning; I don’t know. My sister seemed upset, though, and just as frightened as me.

*** This might have actually occurred that same night. I’m not certain it didn’t, but either way: while at the cabin my dad once asked me if I had been reading in bed late at night. I told him no, and asked why. He had seen a bluish-white light outside his bedroom window, coming from the direction of the bedroom I shared with my sister. I had a reading light that is quite bright, which is why he asked.

*** On another occasion at the cabin, after the event with the nosebleed, I have a brief but strong memory: of waking up in the middle of the night, unable to see or move, gripped by the most powerful terror I have ever experienced, and knowing that I had to make myself move, now. I don’t know why. I remember nothing before or after. It could have been a dream, or sleep paralysis. Either way, it wasn’t pleasant.

After the event with the nosebleed I became, understandably, obsessed with finding out what, if anything, was going on. I began to sleep worse than ever and couldn’t concentrate in school. Eventually my dad noticed and told me that I need to step back, let it go. Full disclosure: there is a history of bipolar disorder in my family. My dad was worried about my obsession and how it might be affecting my mental health.

I agreed to let it go. I decided that I knew only one thing for sure: I have no idea what the hell is going on, if anything. I had no way of finding out, and no way of changing things either way. So I stopped my research, stopped my endless wondering, and just tried to focus on other things. It worked, for the most part. I still am and always will be interested in the alien/UFO phenomenon. It still frightens me, still occasionally keeps me awake at night. The events I have listed still stand out in my memory, and I still occasionally go on a UFO kick. But, after graduating from high school and all throughout college, I experienced no new strange events, as far as I am aware.

Well, that’s not entirely true. In the winter of 2014, while walking at night with my girlfriend, I saw what looked like two very bright stars in the sky above our neighborhood. Almost as soon as I saw them they began to steadily fade until they had disappeared completely. There was no movement, no sound, no anything. The night was clear, so it wasn’t a cloud passing in front of them. I’ve actually already submitted a report about this on MUFON.

One more thing: my dad has had similar unusual experiences during his life. He has told me about at least one potential UFO he saw, and about a childhood dream in which little doctors took him out of his bed at night. He has also noticed that electronics behave strangely around him. Several times the TV has turned on or off randomly when he is in the room, as have other electronics. There was an incident at the cabin, which he actually caught on film, during which a plant was weirdly attracted to him, as if by static charge. When he moved close to it, the plant bent towards him; when he moved away, it stood back up normally. It only happened with him. We’ve never seen anything like it before or since.

I hope this wasn’t too long. I don’t know if I’ve been contacted, abducted, or had any encounter of any sort. There’s enough potential evidence to make me think, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering. I guess, by submitting this, I’m still looking for answers. If you think it worth investigating, I would love to communicate. A part of me is scared to dig into this any further than I already have, scared of finding out that I’m crazy, or of uncovering memories that would be better off left alone. But the part of me that wants answers trumps the frightened part. - MUFON CMS

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5 Women Accused of Being Witches Beaten To Death

PATNA, India — Dozens of villagers in eastern India beat to death five women Saturday, accusing them of practicing witchcraft and blaming them for a series of misfortunes in the village, police said.

Residents of Kinjia village in Jharkhand state dragged the women out of their homes and beat them with sticks and iron rods, said Arun Kumar Singh, a deputy inspector-general of police in Ranchi, Jharkhand's capital.

The attackers blamed the women for several accidents and misfortunes suffered by villagers, including the death of an infant in Kinjia earlier in the week, Singh said.

Police have arrested around 50 people involved in the attack, Singh said.

A large number of police officers have been deployed in the village to prevent any outbreak of violence.

Blood stains are seen on the ground following the killing of five Indian women who were accused of practicing witchcraft in Kanjia village in eastern Jharkhand state on August 8, 2015.
PreviousNextBlood stains are seen on the ground following the killing of five Indian women who were accused of practicing witchcraft in Kanjia village in eastern Jharkhand state on August 8, 2015. Villagers in a rural part of eastern India have killed five women whom they accused of practising witchcraft, police said August 8. Police in eastern Jharkhand state said a group of assailants dragged the women out of their huts and beat them to death at around midnight in their village, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from state capital Ranchi. AFP PHOTOSTR/AFP/Getty Images The bodies of women, who have been accused of practicing witchcraft, are placed in a truck in Kinjia village in Jharkhand state, India, Saturday, Aug. 8, 2015. Dozens of villagers in eastern India beat to death five women Saturday, accusing them of practicing witchcraft and blaming them for a series of misfortunes in the village, police said.

"In the age of knowledge, this incident is sorrowful. Society should ponder over it," he said in a statement.

Superstitious beliefs persist in many parts of India and have been behind similar attacks on women in Jharkhand.

From 2000 to 2012, around 2,100 people, mostly women, were killed in India on suspicion of practicing witchcraft, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

A young boy in Thailand can allegedly recall specific details of his previous life as a serpent.

In an apparent case of animal reincarnation, a young Thai boy named Dalawong was three years old when he met an aquaintance of his father, Mr. Hiew, for the first time.

Despite having never met the man before Dalawong was able to describe in explicit detail a confrontation between Mr Hiew, who was a hunter, and a snake that he had killed in a cave.

The three-year-old provided an accurate account of how the snake had been cornered by Hiew's two dogs before being killed and cooked for food. He even described how his father had eaten a piece of the snake, a fact that both men were later able to verify.

Dalawong's remarkable recollection of these events was attributed to the fact that he believed he had lived the life of that very same snake in his previous incarnation. The boy even suffered from a rare skin condition that covered his lower body in snake-like scales.

The peculiar case was investigated by Francis Story, an associate of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson and whose findings were later put to paper in a book on reincarnation by Dr. Jim Tucker.

"I may be well past your boggle threshold now, the point at which a story becomes too mind-boggling to accept," he wrote. "I confess this case approaches my own boggle threshold."

"Though I might be able to believe that a chimpanzee could have some conscious memory of a candy necklace, I certainly don’t believe a snake would remember details about a particular location and a series of events, and years later be able to recognize a man who was its final nemesis."

Large numbers of flying ants have been invading parts of the British Isles due to the warmer weather.

Ants can be enough of a problem when they are limited to crawling on the ground, but when tens of thousands of them take to the air they can collectively pose a huge nuisance.

Internet users in England and Wales have been hitting social media over the last few days to report large numbers of the airborne pests swarming pavements and crawling in to people's houses.

Experts believe that the recent spell of warm and dry weather is to blame for the invasion.

Despite the excessive ant population wildlife authorities have asked people to avoid killing them because they can actually help out local plant-life by feasting on garden pests.

For those who have had to call in exterminators to remove swarms of the insects from their own homes however their benefit to the local ecosystem is unlikely to be much of a consolation.

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Tips on the Art of Manifestation

by Rosemary Ellen Guiley
c. Visionary Living, Inc.

The art of manifestation is a combination of resources: spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. All four must be employed to bring about desired changes. It takes discipline, but in a few minutes every day, you can train yourself to have powerful forces in motion at all times. Here are the key building blocks:

Spiritual. First, you need an inspired vision. Circumstances in the world motivate change, but even more important are the impulses from the spiritual realms that reach us through the Higher Self, our dreams, and inner promptings. Spiritual inspiration directs the unfoldment of life’s journey. Prayer, meditation and knowing one’s heart open the way for inspired vision.

Mental. Thoughts, intention, and will provide the raw power for manifestation. Thought creates reality. Think failure and you will get failure. Think success and you will have it. Maintaining positive thought is a challenge under most circumstances, and in a global news community mired in chaos, disasters, and doomsday predictions, it is even more challenging. What you think, you become. Few people truly understand the tremendous creative power of thought. Instead, we are taught to dismiss thought as fantasy. Use your thought power wisely and constructively.

Emotional. Those who succeed best at manifesting their goals feel them and feed them on every level of their being. Not only is the goal envisioned mentally, but it engages all of the senses until it become real. Feel it, see it, hear it, touch it, taste it.

Physical. Action is the final step that puts the previous elements into motion. You have to apply yourself in the physical world. Look for opportunities, take risks, make decisions, and stop procrastinating. Nothing is handed out on a platter, and there is never the absolutely perfect time to make change. Sometimes manifestation takes a long time to work out. Your own forces in motion work alongside other forces in motion. There may be course corrections along the way. Manifestation, like any art, is a work in progress, subject to refinement and change as your vision and sense of purpose grow and change. You have to learn when to push, when to hold back, when to be patient, and when to change course.

Here is a visualization that is effective for focusing thought and intention:

Sit in a comfortable position with both feet on the floor. Focus on the breath. On the inhale, visualize a stream of golden white light entering the body through the head, and circulating through every body part and cells. On the exhale the breath flows down the body, out through the feet and into the earth. This opens the crown chakra to the spiritual plane and grounds the energy into the physical plane.

The light comes from the Divine Source of All Being, the eternal cycle of creation. When the light has filled your body, channel some of into your hands. The hands are symbols of manifestation, power, and work in the world. Visualize your goal while you fill your hands with light. When your hands feel hot, heavy and full, hold the palms outward and send the light, along with your goal, into the Divine Source of All Being. Consider it done.

Do not become discouraged if you do not get quick results. Instant access on the internet has conditioned us to expect instant results for whatever we want, but in real life this is not the case. Some results do happen quickly, but others take time, even a long time, to work out. Sometimes there are intermediate steps that must be accomplished first. The art of manifestation is fluid and cannot be forced.

If you practice focusing your thought and intention for a few minutes a day, the energy will build and become part of the backdrop of how you engage in daily life. You will have a clearer head about all sorts of decisions, big and small.

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